The present invention relates to a communication technology such as Instant Messaging (IM).
A communication technology called IM is gathering attentions. Sometimes, a matter to talk with the other party may not need a rapid response through a telephone. However, if an e-mail containing the matter is sent through an E-mail, it is not clear when the other party reads (that is, when his/her reply is obtained). IM has a time characteristic that is intermediate between the telephone and the e-mail. In IM, a current status (which may be called presence information), such as online or offline or the ability to respond, of each party is published. Thus, in response to presence information of friends using the same IM system over the Internet, a tool to be used for communication with friends, such as a chat and an e-mail, can be selected.
Presently, IM systems are released from many venders, and IM clients, each of which is application software to use a respective IM system, are distributed. However, there is no compatibility among IM systems of the respective venders. As a result, communication cannot be performed between the IM clients of the different venders. Thus, the standardization is started from a need for the interconnectivity. In Instant Messaging & Presence Protocol (IMPP) working group of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the architecture, the message integration and the security (such as authentication and encryption) relating to IM are being discussed. A model is defined for Require for Comment (RFC) 2778 while a protocol requirements are defined for RFC 2779.
Conventionally, the multi-party connection (group chat) in IM is mainly used just for fun (hobby use), such as gossiping. However, recently, study for using the group chat for business has been started. Here, it is noted that the text-based group chat may be not enough for the business uses in many cases. For example, inputting Japanese language takes time. In addition, in order to express a complicated matter or a shade of meaning, which is hard to be understood from a document, the voice support is needed. In the one-to-one (Peer-to-Peer) technology, the expansion into communication using multimedia has been started. The first reference (Nikkei Communication, Nov. 5, 2001, pgs. 106 to 113) proposes such usage of multimedia that a meeting is held by using a voice chat or by exchanging files.